


Famine and Fear

by defieddracula



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Adult Content, Angst, Don't copy to another site, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Mild S&M, Original Character(s), Smut, good thing umbra's here to save the day, regardless someone should get these two some therapy, that s&m tag is just to be safe because there isn't any formal s&m going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 09:37:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19170610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defieddracula/pseuds/defieddracula
Summary: Tatiana returns to Lucien broken, bloodied, and battling a host of clashing emotions after the Purification.  Grieving the Sanctuary's loss himself, he offers her shelter in Fort Farragut, and like any good assassins, they manage to brush aside their hurts and await further word from the Black Hand.  Days go by, and it seems that life might eventually look up.  After all, they are all each other has left.  What else does a Speaker and Silencer need?Then, Lucien recognizes something else twisted up in her ruined heart, something darker, deeper, and more frightening than grief could ever be.  And to his horror, it's a feeling he shares.





	Famine and Fear

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, two things. 
> 
> First, I'm glad to finally have this finished so I can move on to the other fics sitting in my slushy slush pile. Second, I'm not wholly satisfied with it, but I'm starting to get that thousand mile stare when I try to work further with it. So, I hope it flows at least somewhat smoothly!

Tatiana swore her heart would bash through her chest. She’d known this was wrong from the start, but damn it all, her fear of discovery hadn’t been enough to trample the desire blooming in her heart. _Should_ have been, yes, but her whole life was nothing but disproven shoulds and should-nots. Why should that change now?

After purifying the Sanctuary, she’d returned to Lucien bloody and shaking with tears aching behind her eyes. If only poison rather than grief had been responsible. Poison, they had the time, means, and skill to remedy. Such bone-deep grief was foreign and frightening, a weighty _thing_ dropped unceremoniously into her hands. Umbra, like a natural instinct, urged her to hunt and kill to vent that grief. Yet there was nothing here to kill, and Tatiana wasn’t yet so blinded that she’d forget her orders.

_Return to me when they lie dead._

She’d expected Lucien to shoo her off to an inn or a safe house to recuperate. Gather her wits and return when she was ready to draw her blade again. Instead, he’d placed his hands square on her shoulders, gaze uncharacteristically soft, and offered her food and shelter in Fort Farragut. Scarcely able to meet his eyes, she accepted in silence. Ate in silence. Bathed in silence and bit back tears as she scrubbed blood from her hair and from under her nails.  

He left the room while she washed and dried herself, changed into her spare clothes and combed the knots from her hair, opting to work his alchemy elsewhere in the fort rather than risk making her uncomfortable. When he returned, he didn’t immediately pursue conversation either. For that, she was glad. Silence had soothed her since childhood. Though now, she doubted she could’ve spoken if she’d wanted to.

Days died, nights stretched on, and she finally managed to lock her sorrow in the dark where it belonged. Lucien seemed to have done the same—if he’d felt any at all. Before long, some semblance of normalcy seeped in through Farragut’s stones: while he waited to hear from the Black Hand, they worked on alchemy and crafting, shared a few friendly words over meals and chores. They sparred each evening, venting hidden pains through sweat and singing steel. Tatiana began to feel at home in the small, domed chamber where she’d placed the cot he’d lent her. She began to hope life would improve—almost enough that she began to believe it.

Then, shortly before they’d retired for the night, Lucien caught her watching him from across Farragut’s main chamber, her eyes half lidded and lips slightly parted. As he slid aside the sheath he’d been tooling and stood, head high, she straightened in her chair and hastily crossed her legs. Panic surged through her. Shame seared her cheeks and the back of her neck. Too little, too late.

If only she’d hadn’t killed broken old Rufio at the Inn of Ill Omen. If only she’d sold the Blade of Woe, crawled back to the Thieves’ Guild, and begged for them to readmit her. Even then, she’d had more than enough coin to pay her blood price.

Lucien snatched her arm and pushed her against the wall, jarring her from her thoughts. She neither protested nor resisted him. She knew better. Everything was a test with Lucien, and every word, breath, microexpression, or subtle shift in body language was an answer to be weighed. True to her training, she stood with her shoulders back, head high, and hands resting loosely at her hips, resisting the near-maddening urge to toy with her braid or tuck tendrils of fair flyaway hair behind her ear. Her breathing remained measured. Her knees straight, but not locked. Vicente—and her thieves’ guild mentor—would’ve smiled on the façade if she’d managed to look Lucien in the eye.

His breath seared her skin as he leaned close, and the sharp pommel of the dagger belted at his hip prodded her waist. "You want me," he said, low and hoarse.

The certainty shadowing his voice caught her like a noose left her dangling. Of course he knew. Lucien Lachance knew _everything_.

The torch to their left crackled in its wall sconce. She flinched, feeling stripped of her pride and everything she’d clawed tooth and nail to achieve. Never had she dared confess the affections she’d developed in her long, bloody months with the Dark Brotherhood. They muddied her thoughts when she met him and dominated her recent journal entries, but she refused to believe he’d skimmed the book while she wasn’t around. If she’d given him reason to invade her privacy, she’d have burned the godsforsaken thing long before now.

She swallowed hard.

“The thieves taught you many wonderful things before abandoning you in the Imperial Prison. Your marksmanship rivals Telaendril’s, and you move as silently as a shadow. In the field, you lie beautifully…” Lucien let his words hang for several seconds, then canted his head, feigning perfect curiosity. “Yet in my company, you read like a cheap novel. Why is that, I wonder?”

Heat flushed hotter over her cheeks. She wanted— _needed_ —to beg for his forgiveness, but her tongue felt like a wad of cotton shoved between her teeth. For the first time in years, she felt helpless. _Guilty_. She needed Umbra and its certainty and comfort; it hung heavy on her belt, its silent song calling to her. But with Lucien having figuratively and literally boxed her in, she had no way to touch it.

So her gaze dropped to their boots—hers, scuffed and scratched with use, and his, clean and recently oiled. She was his Silencer, dammit. Fear should shame her more than her attraction to him. She'd slain dozens in the Dark Brotherhood's name. Forged through Cyrodiil's wilderness, bested its bandits, undead horrors, and feral beasts time and time again. How could she fall before something as senseless as love or lust?

Tatiana reached for him, chewing her lip and struggling to hide her trembles. She expected him to strike her. When he didn’t, her hand crept up his chest, fingertips brushing his collarbone. She’d donned her plainclothes—riding breeches and a thick cotton blouse—after they sparred that afternoon, but he’d chosen his spare Black Hand robes. No armor or gambeson to ward off the dungeon’s chill. Just cotton over smooth contours of flesh and bone.

She inhaled slowly; the subtle scents of candle smoke, ink, and aging parchment lingered in the room, all far kinder than the sweat, blade oil, and fresh blood that had choked the Sanctuary air when she left. Hesitantly, she eased his hood back; golden torchlight glinted in his eyes and hair, shadows sharpening the lines of his face. Her hand drifted to his heart. Found it racing.

Fingers curling into a fist, her hand fell back to her side. Hearts raced with more than love or desire. Anger or the thrill of the hunt and kill, for starters. Lucien was a master manipulator. For all she knew, this was a ploy to humiliate her and shock her priorities into line. If it was, she'd played into his hands and deserved any and every punishment he could inflict upon her.

Suddenly, he hooked his thumb beneath her chin and tilted her head up. His expression softened slightly, the edge in his voice blunted. “Look at me.”

Her eyes flicked open. Her knees felt like poorly set gelatin. "I did not wish to offend you, nor anyone else, Speaker," she managed.

He chuckled pityingly, the sound a rumble deep in his chest. "Contrary to what some may tell you, my dear, lust is a perfectly natural thing. I have known it, as have most of our brothers and sisters at some point or another. Take no shame in it."

 _I doubt you knew it for one of them, though,_ she thought miserably _._ The relationship between a Speaker and their Silencer was inviolable. When she'd first dreamt of him and woken with a wet, damnable ache between her thighs, her hand instinctively slipping into her smallclothes to soothe it, she knew she'd tainted their bond. There were no tenets against taking lovers—even other guildmates—but such relationships were dangerous. Beyond fairytale rubbish, love strengthened no one. It clouded good judgment and offered leverage to enemies. Love killed as sure as any blade.

Not only that, she and Lucien had reputations to maintain. Were they still alive, their guildmates would eventually discover their sordid little secret. Disgust and jealousy would rot Antoinetta's cheery smiles and greetings. Gogran would laugh, slap her on the back, and add some disturbing and unbelievably relevant anecdote from a past contract. And Vicente, dear Vicente, would merely sigh and warn her of the risk they were taking, fixing her with the same disappointed stare her father would give her when he caught her sneaking treats before supper.

But their opinions no longer mattered, did they? They were just ghosts to haunt her. Just victims to her blade and her Speaker’s word. As for the rest of the Black Hand, she knew scarcely more than their names. Lucien, her mentor and friend, was all she had left, the lone scrap of happiness divines or daedra hadn’t stolen from her.

_Life will seize every pleasure you ignore. It always has and always will._

Those who would disapprove were dead or leagues away. She and Lucien were, for the night, _free_. Free to dabble in arts too dark and forbidden even for them. Why shouldn’t she take advantage of that, if she could?

“Or would you disagree?”

His voice lifted her from her whirling thoughts. She blinked quickly, uncertain how long she’d left him in silence. “No, but…” She trailed off and managed to meet his eyes. Never before had she noticed the subtle flecks of gold in them. "You would have your Silencer?"

A smirk tweaked his too-smooth lips. "Each shall seek their own kind."

Without warning, he pinned her wrists above her head and kissed her. For a fleeting second, she froze, then blinked away her surprise and answered him in kind, their gives and takes desperate.

Worry once again tapped her shoulder. Would she disappoint him? It had been so long since she’d wanted anyone like this. Longer still since anyone appeared to want _her_ like this. She’d had sex twice before, clumsy, innocent trysts in a tavern bed with the most handsome of her fellow thieves. Since joining the Brotherhood, Lucien had proven himself equal or superior to her in every trade and talent, save for archery and horsemanship. Why should this be any different?

She bit his lower lip, tugged at it before crushing her mouth to his again. Perhaps it didn't matter. Perhaps she could accept this as the only acceptable thing it could be: an anchor in the lightless, broken world she and Lucien knew, an act of sorely needed catharsis. Distantly, she wondered at the depths of his grief. Did he need this as much as she did?

Umbra clattered to the floor with her sword belt and dagger, and her breath caught in her throat as his hand slipped beneath her shirt to palm her breast, his touch firm but not forceful. Sithis help her, when had he removed his gloves.

He pressed his knee between her thighs, grinning against her neck when she rocked her hips against it. A pitiful moan escaped her as he mouthed the corner of her jaw, the scratch of his stubble chasing shivers down her spine. Tatiana leaned her head back and strained against his grip.

Rather than order her to be still, he released her and shed his sword belt and outer robe, letting both fall unceremoniously about his ankles. She fumbled with her boots’ laces, pulled them off, and toed them aside. Taking in the sight of him, she stripped off her gloves. Shadow and firelight danced over his scars, the most notable being a long slash over his sternum and a jagged arrow wound at his shoulder, both white with age. Some sort of animal bite marred his right bicep, well-healed but still pink and puckered at the edges. He often stripped to the waist when they sparred, yet seeing him now felt different. It thrilled her in ways no adrenaline or clamor of steel could.  

Forget lavishing him with kisses as she had in her dreams. The longer she stayed in these godsforsken breeches, the more she felt like she was caught in a famine.

Lucien watched her through lust-hazed eyes as he unlaced his trousers and hitched them down to his thighs. At first sight, he’d thought her pretty. Nothing more. After months of training with her, bonding with her, claiming her as his Silencer, he thought her dangerously beautiful. He'd had his share of women over the years, rough kisses and touches bought when he couldn’t scratch the itch himself. Most had had fuller breasts and lips. All had had straight noses, unscarred, perfectly made-up faces, and hair that smelled of sweet perfume rather than sweat, horse, and leather. Yet he hadn’t wanted any of them like he wanted her. Cracks spidered through his decades-old defenses, terrifying warmth bleeding through.

 _No._ This changed nothing. Come dawn, he'd order her to the first of her dead drops as if they’d spent the night like any other, cleaning their gear or dabbling in alchemy. Weeks would pass before they reunited. Months, if she lived that long. They'd be Speaker and Silencer again, finger and nail, not these two lost and pathetic souls.

She was his weapon, after all. A pretty one, but a weapon nonetheless. He couldn't forget that.

 _Wouldn't_.

Bracing her shoulders against the wall, he had no trouble lifting and holding her with one arm. With the other, he rubbed the head of his cock over her slick heat, relishing her breathy pleas. Slowly, half to tease her, half because he didn’t want to risk hurting her, he pressed inside. Pleasurable shivers rattled down his back and thighs. Tatiana tensed and looped her legs around his hips. Pain seared his shoulders as she dug her nails into them, pain he savored. The sting reminded him of the man he was and the one he swore he’d never be. He stilled.

“Fuck,” she whispered, burying her face into the crook of his neck.

Some might’ve driven her to the edge of oblivion, satisfied their needs, and left her there like a broken toy. The notion disgusted him. Weapon, lover, or both, she deserved utmost care. She'd served him and the Brotherhood faithfully, refusing to question them even when she questioned herself. Waiting for her word was a kindness he saw no reason to kill.

After a moment, she shifted her hips to push him deeper, locking her legs around his waist. She leaned back just far enough to meet his gaze and nodded.

Without comment, he adjusted his grip on her and settled into a steady rhythm. Tatiana didn’t know how long they lasted, so lost in their passion and deafened by their rasping breaths and the blood roaring in her ears. She kissed his neck, pulled at his hair as his strokes came deeper and faster, setting her every nerve ablaze. Her toes curled. Goosebumps pebbled her thighs. She raked a hand across his back, nails leaving raised red streaks in their wake. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple as she held her breath, fighting desperately to drag her pleasure out as long as she could.

“Oh gods, _gods…”_ she whimpered. “Don’t stop.” _Just another minute_ , she thought, pleading with herself as she clenched around him.   _Just another…_

He clutched her tighter and drove her on, thrusts slower and less rhythmic, but harder, deeper than before. As if its strings had been cut, the tension coiled within her sprang free. Her fingers and toes tingled, and maddening heat pulsed beneath her core. Her eyes rolled back, nails nearly drawing blood at his shoulders, and she gasped out his name, not his title, like it was her final breath.

Lucien gritted his teeth and groaned. While training or sparring, she sometimes yelled or cursed in frustration or pain, grunted as she parried or thrust her blade. But her moans, by the Void, her moans and these high, breathy, desperate little things resonated deep in the cores of his bones. Another moment, and the muscles at the base of his cock twitched. Before he could cry out and live to regret it later, he bit the top of her shoulder, panting through his nose as his climax rolled over him in hot, dizzying waves. Her name crashed through his mind, but he refused to voice it.

He gave a few weak, final thrusts before stilling. Sweat glistened on his brow and chest. Pinpricks of blood beaded where her nails had last been. The muscles in his limbs quivered with exertion and the tingling remnants of ecstasy, but he held her tight, forehead pressed to the wall as he hunted his breath.

Together, they hung in the limbo of mutual silence, thoughts beautifully, blissfully hazy. For the moment, their guildmates still lived. There was no traitor. No poisonous emotions festering in the ruins of their hearts.

Convinced she’d never again have the opportunity, Tatiana stole slow, tender kisses up his neck, her hand cradling the side of his face. Lucien stiffened, lurching through their sorry excuse for an afterglow as if had burned him. The sweet silence twisted into awkwardness, and she knew she’d crossed a line. She shifted in his arms, suddenly aware of the patchy scrapes where her shirt had ridden up at the base of her spine.

Lucien eased her onto her feet. He tugged his trousers up and hurriedly laced them, then donned his robes and slung on his belt and dagger. Her kisses felt like pinpricks on his throat. Her gasps still filled his mind. Supposedly forgotten scraps of humanity urged him to embrace her, but he focused on the scratches crisscrossing his shoulders, hellbent on disappearing into the dark, icy waters knew best.

Though Fort Farragut was drafty in any season, the air within was suddenly too thick to breathe. He had to leave before she asked him to stay. Or worse, before he considered staying regardless.

He handed her breeches to her and nodded toward his bed. Voice noncommittal, he said, "Rest here for the night. I will wake you at dawn. There is still much work to be done.”

She nodded and caught his gaze for a fraction of a second. There, she saw none of lust she’d seen moments ago, and all of the stony authority she’d known as his subordinate. Anger swept in where desire had died. Hating her stupidity and weakness, hating herself, she dragged her smallclothes and pants back on, grimacing at the cold, still-damp fabric sliding up her thighs.

By the time her laces were tied, Lucien had crossed the chamber and was halfway up the ladder to the trap door in the ceiling, close enough to hear her speak, but far enough to pretend he didn't. Tatiana didn’t bother calling after him. The trap door closed and locked with barely more than a whisper

She set her sword belt and with the rest of her gear on the worktable. She picked up Umbra as if it were made of glass, fingers brushing its guard apologetically as she laid it beside her dagger. No scratches or dents, of course, but she shouldn’t have been so careless.

The potential implications of their impulsivity crashing into her, she downed the contents of a small vial from her travel kit, grimacing as the bitter serum slid down her throat; her moonblood had only just ended, so she felt the chances were minimal, but the absolute last thing she needed was a child. Better safe than sorry. _Especially_ with this.  

A bath sounded tempting, but she was too physically and emotionally drained to tote buckets for a second time that night. Settling for a change of clothes, she snuffed the candles and torches and crawled into his bed. The mattress was softer than she'd expected—stuffed with down or at least mostly down—and made her feel like the bloodstained rug in the corner was her proper place. Worsening matters, his pillow smelled faintly of his hair. Of pine and supple leather.  

Rolling so the candles were to her back, Tatiana dragged the sheet up to her chin. He’d said she read like a cheap book. That cut like a serrated knife. But what she had and hadn’t seen in Luc—her _Speaker’s_ —eyes, sawed to the bone and reminded her why assassins shouldn’t take lovers. She closed her eyes, throat tightening. If someone plunged a dagger toward her neck, she wasn’t sure if she’d bother ducking or batting it aside.

You’re so much better than that, she told herself, scowling into the dark. Umbra’s dim purple glow, like mist over a lake, drew her attention. Her thoughts began to clear. If he didn’t want her as she wanted him, then so be it. No matter what she did or didn’t do, how she felt or didn’t feel, something else wanted her far more than any mortal ever would.        

She threw the blanket back and snatched Umbra from the table. Leaving it in its scabbard, she raised the portcullis sealing the main chamber and strode down the hall. With quivering fingers, she squeezed Umbra’s hilt, its blessed warmth and surety and drive radiating up her arm, into her head and chest, down through her core and into her legs. One of Farragut’s skeletal guardians turned its empty eyes to her as she strode by, but made no move to attack. A growing part of her wished it had.

Her room was at the end of a corridor southwest of the inner sanctum, just far enough to be private and near enough for Lucien to find her quickly. She settled into her cot, not bothering with her blanket; the chilly air hardly touched her with Umbra in hand. As if she was a child clutching a stuffed bear, Tatiana held the sword close close. Sithis only knew how long she glared into the dark, stoking her anger as the guardians tromped up and down the halls. By the time sleep swept her into deep, dreamless darkness, she knew one thing.

If Lucien wanted a weapon, then by the Void, he’d have it.

~ ~ ~

Lucien didn’t slip into Cheydinhal as he originally planned. He’d painted on his mask better than Tatiana had, but Vicente, Ocheeva, and the others had been family as much to him as they’d been to her, and he baulked at the idea of facing the sanctuary’s clammy stillness. After the Black Hand’s contacts buried the bodies, scrubbed the floors, he’d...

Scowling, he ghosted up the steps to the top floor of Farragut’s ruined central tower. How could he let such weakness rule him? Their deaths were necessary to protect and restore the Brotherhood. They were at Sithis’s side now, resting peacefully if innocent and rightfully punished if guilty. Losing a leg was better than losing a life.

He wasn’t simply bending to the soft sentiments that had ruled him as a child. Avoiding the Sanctuary meant he wouldn’t need to clean blood off his boots. Truth was the foundation for the best lies, after all—and that was at least _partly_ true.

Crisp autumn wind keened long and low from the west, knifing in through the seams in his robes. Fishing a small whetstone from a pouch on his belt, he slumped against the wall and drew his dagger. The scrape of steel on stone not comforting him as it should, he eventually stowed them both and stared through the gaping hole in the tower’s side. He gazed up at the stars glittering above the city, trying to lose himself in the constellations and wisps of cloud.

An icy knot twisted and ached in his throat. Stars disappeared come storms or sunrise, but always returned. Tatiana might not.

Her soft face, her storm-blue eyes, and the wavy gold hair that framed them all, haunted him. Thoughts of their crime of passion, fears of losing her, unexpectedly broke him. Holding his breath, he pinched the bridge of his nose and clenched his eyes. No tears. Dammit, there should _never_ be tears. He slammed his fist once, twice, three times against the wall behind him, the rough stone shredding the side of his hand and little finger. The scrapes stung like his back. The budding bruises throbbed. Both were void-sends.

He returned to the base of the tower, robes billowing behind him. He moistened his lips and whistled softly. From the shadowy copse near the courtyard entrance emerged Shadowmere, ears pricked toward him and hooves silent on the grass. Moonlight danced in the mare’s scarlet eyes and dappled her ebon coat. Nickering, she nosed his shoulder, then his bleeding in the hopes of earning a few strips of meat. He shushed her gently. She snorted, but didn’t turn away.

A frail smile threatened Lucien’s lips, fading as quickly as it had come. Stroking the crest of her neck, he kissed her forelock. Something about the creature soothed him. Always had, always would.

“Take care of her,” he whispered, “as you have so faithfully taken care of me.”


End file.
